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WORKERS UNITED
Posting has been slack here of late - curse you, demon work! - but at least I’m not on strike:
Sydney Morning Herald and Sun-Herald staff walked out this afternoon indefinitely.
“The company has pulled its third redundancy round in four years on us, including 35 redundancies,” Fairfax house committee co-chair Ruth Pollard said.
“So we decided to take action until they come back to the table with a reasonable set of proposals re the redundancies” ...
Staff will hold a rally from 8am at Fairfax headquarters in Sussex St in Sydney tomorrow.
A Sydney Morning Herald rally? Bring on the giant puppet heads!
I lived in Sydney nearly 30 years ago. The SMH was an unreadable leftist rag in those days, but they had a lock on classifieds and job ads.
History and technology is a bummer, if you are on the wrong side of it, or great if you are on the right side of it.
BTW, I’m pushing the Smoking Gun that blows AGW out of the water.
Oh, Tim—here’s a beautiful (and more accurate) counterpoint to the ubiquitous “stranded polar bear” pic.
I bet this one doesn’t get nearly as much use, tho. Hehe.
Maybe Lileks would be an imported scab? His writing would certainly improve those birdcage liners.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 05 09 at 09:18 AM • permalinkHehe, you beat me to it, JeffS.
Curse you!
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2007 05 09 at 09:21 AM • permalinkTalldave in Walt Disney they would have been lifelong friends.
That was why I liked the movie Madagasgar the lion finally tried to eat the zebra.
PS I’d like to see pics of the puppet heads too and how can they afford them aren’t they err redundant?Posted by hollingshead on 2007 05 09 at 09:42 AM • permalinkSydney Morning Herald and Sun-Herald staff walked out this afternoon indefinitely.
Circulation rose 9% the first day.
A Sydney Morning Herald rally?
But… but… if there’s an underattended and overhyped rally and the SMH isn’t there to cover it, does it make a noise…?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 05 09 at 09:45 AM • permalinkDo the SMH staffers actually qualify for unemployment benefits? Is there any evidence they’ve actually been working at all?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 05 09 at 09:56 AM • permalinkRuth Pollard and her colleagues have spooned up leftist shite for decades and driven readers away in droves. I know that in fairy land this means you are a working class hero and keep your job forever. But in the real world, talking to customers as if they’re stupid has consequences. Perhaps if she’d read Milton Friedman instead of Karl Marx she’d have worked out a more sustainable way to comport herself at work.
Maybe she can start a blog and attract readers in a true free market of ideas.
Hehe, you beat me to it, JeffS.
Just trying to take care of our own, Mr. B!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 05 09 at 11:19 AM • permalinkI don’t know, not really, but um, how about trying out this idea? How about the employees of the SMH ... and the management ... team up together ... to put out a good ... and unbiased ... newspaper ... that people would want to buy?
Wouldn’t that solve everyone’s problems?
Posted by wronwright on 2007 05 09 at 11:39 AM • permalinkIf your employer suspects you of being redundant, why would you want to go out and prove it?
Posted by Paul Zrimsek on 2007 05 09 at 11:51 AM • permalinkSydney Morning Herald and Sun-Herald staff walked out this afternoon indefinitely.
How could you tell?
#21. That is an excellent point - maybe they can draw up yet another round of redundancies from this little strike experience?!
Posted by Major John on 2007 05 09 at 02:00 PM • permalinkI note that reporters and photographers were excluded from the job cuts. What, there are no redundancies in their numbers? Or it’s just easier to force the remaining support staff to take on ever increasing work loads for no more pay?
In any case, it’s a newspaper about which no Australian here has had anything good to say, so who cares?
*Oops, I did it again.
How Britney of you.
Hey, y’all cath this rock out rendition of ” Oops, I did it again”
Just trying to help out the newspapers down there.
California Man Cuts Off Mom’s Head With Saw, Dies Trying to Cut Off His Own
Great headline, no? (literally). Maybe the Islamist’s will pick up on this new technique, huh?“Redundancy” would be a better word if there were a word “Dundancy” that meant exactly the same thing.
Posted by Paul Zrimsek on 2007 05 09 at 03:30 PM • permalinkOT again. Good to hear that so-called Tim’s employer has agreed to go carbon neutral. Tim’s carbon offsets are expected to take up the forests indicated here in the purple.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 05 09 at 06:07 PM • permalinkYou may say I’m redundant, but I’ll have you know I, and my esteemed college of scribes and erstwhile toilers under the banner of the Media, Arts & Entertainment Alliance are, indubitably and formidably, (sweeping gesture to the far horizon) On Strike!
As long as they made Ed O’ Loughlin redundant, that is all that matters. Fucking idiot.
Posted by The Best Infidel on 2007 05 09 at 06:25 PM • permalinkWho needs giant puppet heads when you have Alan Ramsey?
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 05 09 at 06:38 PM • permalinkWe regret this interruption to the flow of information from the SMH, fountain of wisdom, wellspring of wellbeing, and pillar of pillocks. Here’s an interview we did earlier:
Reporter: Would you please explain your climate initiative?
ALP: Thanks. Our research, as you know, indicates a need to clamp down on energy use and reduce CO2 emissions. We’ll identify two houses out of every hundred and make them reduce their carbon footprint by 60%.
Reporter: How will you choose those two houses?
ALP: That’s easy. You avoid all those where the people tell you to piss off, like the ones where the bikies and redneck-blue collar types live. Leave out the aggro foreigners to whom any suggestion is an affront to their culture. Don’t bother with those rich, gated communities who set the dogs on you. And the hippies don’t have the power connected any more. What we’re looking for is the middle-class, inoffensive, do-gooders who can be roped into a cause or told that it’s in their best interests to do as we say. Politics is a body contact sport, and they don’t want to get hurt, do they?
Reporter: So, say you succeed and browbeat these two houses into reducing their emissions by 60%; is that really having much impact overall?
ALP: No, but it makes electoral sense because it looks like we’re doing something while the other mob are just denialists.
Reporter: I guess it’s like Australia, with 1.6% of the world’s emissions, reducing them by 60% while most countries find an excuse not to.
ALP: Yes, but don’t print that. At least not until after the election.#49 Yes and now it seems that Rupert is losing his marbles.
Whatever happened to clear logical thought and correct identification of cause and effect.
I wonder what on earth Rupert thinks this crap will achieve? He says it’s good business, but really ... oh WTF /endmuse.
Seems to me a golden opportunity to return the classifieds to the front page, where they belong.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 05 09 at 07:34 PM • permalink“The Workers! United!
Will Never Be Rehired!
The Workers! United!
Will Never Be Rehired!
The Workers! United!
Will Never Be Rehired!
The Workers! United!
Will Never Be Rehired!Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 05 09 at 09:24 PM • permalinkGo ahead. Go on strike. After all, you’re not exactly and essential service.
Posted by Miranda Divide on 2007 05 09 at 09:54 PM • permalinkAs well as not being and essential service, compared to John Denver, he has sold very few CDs.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 05 09 at 10:37 PM • permalinkCan we expect to see those high profile Fairfax Socialists,Carlton and Fitzsimons,join the Comrades at the barricades? Perhaps not,they may have signed private contracts (sort of like up-market AWA’s for the elite)that happily prevent one from taking strike action and thus losing money in the futile pursuit of justice for plebs.
Guess what? The indefinite strike appears to have ended pretty damn quick.
Herald journalists return to workThe best day of my life was one where the non-worker of Radio JJJ went on strike.
No announcers, no reporters, no whingey-whiney Howard-haterLeftie Pacifist Feminist drivel, nothing - just one great indie rock song after another for the whole day.
Bliss!
Posted by Apparatchik on 2007 05 10 at 02:10 AM • permalinkEveryone has their price. Pay anyone enough money and they will leave quietly.
Either Fairfax is being stingy, or the journalists have an over-inflated sense of their worth.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 05 10 at 08:16 AM • permalink#62- My thoughts exactly- it was almost worth 8c that day, but didn’t last long. I’m currently besieging them with complaints- every time I hear one of the perpetual undergraduates that plague this network editorialise on some issue, I put it in writing to station and corporation management, and the minister. I figure if enough people annoy them they’ll shed the mouthy onair onanists and revert to a music format; it’s supposed to be a yoof network for fucks sake, and they wilfully ignore the fact that the 18-35 demographic is staunchly conservative and vote Liberal (and hate hiphop and crap whiny hippies like Missy Fucking Higgins). Their Newtowncentric lean is appealing to a small and shrinking audience of humanities students and lecturers, and assorted failures.
I worked at the SMH for about 18 months around 1977. In the graphics department. One day a guy chomping on an apple came dragging his feet through the department and mumbled something like ‘all out’. And kept going. I asked what did he say and as everyone bent down and picked up their lunch boxes someone repeated ‘all out’. This was a first for me, a country boy from Townsville. So… I followed the many hundreds of workers into the bowels of the SMH to hear one comrade after another talk to the reason for the about to be voted on strike. It seems some apprentice had hit a supervisor and had been sacked on the spot. It also seems that this was the second time this apprentice had hit a supervisor and had been sacked on the spot. As the meeting went on and on and on and on and on I noticed comrades slipping out of the windows that opened at our head height and allowed those exiting to stand up at street level and I suppose go to the beach.
So we all voted to go on strike for 3 days. The next day I went down to buy a paper expecting to see no SMH there and there it was about 80% of its normal size and still with all the bits I liked to read. It seems the management was able to produce a paper without 90% of its work staff. That was one of a number of Union experiences I had that help mould me into the anti left mongrel my children now identify as their Father.Posted by Macosghair on 2007 05 10 at 09:09 PM • permalink
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Will there be head tilting? I want pics!